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Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore - 6/10/18

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Downey to Lubbock/Joe Nick Patoski

Downey, California to Lubbock, Texas is a thousand-mile straight shotacross the heart of the American West, with not much in between. Thecities at each end of the line are one-time cowtowns that grew intosymmetrically-platted working-class communities with very little tointerrupt the horizon plane, making for big empty canvasses thatrequire a vivid imagination to fill in all that blank space.Dave Alvin from Downey and Jimmie Dale Gilmore from Lubbock havebeen filling canvasses with music of the American West for decades,coming from two very different directions.The title track explains Alvin is a Strat-packing, wild blues Blaster, a nodto the roots rock band he formed with his brother Phil in 1978 beforeDave peeled off to go his own way in 1986. He’s been part of the bandsX, the Knitters, and the Flesh Eaters, tours relentlessly with his ownband, the Guilty Ones, and continues apace on musical quests informedby his love of California and its history, and by Texas and the South,where most of the great music that was made in Los Angeles before andafter the Second World War came from.Gilmore is the old Flatlander from the Great High Plains, acknowledginghis first group, the folk-country trio formed in Lubbock 1972 with JoeEly and Butch Hancock who continue performing and recording today.In addition to the Flatlanders and an extended solo career, he has beenpart of several ensembles including the Hub City Movers and TheWronglers with Warren Hellman, who started the Hardly, StrictlyBluegrass Festival in San Francisco.Alvin is a rowdy baritone. Gilmore, the timekeeper of the high lonesome,warbles. Each is an avatar, an authentic, original creator with a strongsense of place and music.That combination might seem like oil and water. But mixed together inthe forms of these ten cover songs and two originals, including theautobiographical title track, this is powerful stuff.The seed for the album was planted a little more than a year ago whilethe two did a duet tour. They’d known each other as friends for morethan thirty years, but had never collaborated musically. Playing livetogether triggered a whole new dynamic. “Everything on that tourworked out so well,” Gilmore said. “The music was fun. During a soundcheck, Dave said, ‘You know, we need to record some of this stuff.’”And so they have.The recording is a mutual admiration society. “Dave’s got a soulfulnessand intelligence in his presentation along with something I really relateto, an anarchic streak that’s anything goes,” Gilmore said. “That’s what itis that’s so kindred about us. In every other way, our music is differentfrom each other. We seem to have a common attitude. We likeeverything, from sweet ballads to raging blues and country stuff.”“It’s like we’ve been playing together since we were kids,” Dave Alvinsaid. “He’s got a lot of soul. Where sometimes I can be over the top, hebrings a calmness, an ‘everything’s going to be all right’ effect, whetherit will be or not. “Gilmore’s voice captivated Alvin. “It kept blowing my mind what anevocative singer he is. He’s a great blues singer. When Jimmie sings theblues, the thing that kept coming into my mind was, ‘This guy soundslike a coyote singing the blues.’”An unspoken symbiosis was in play. “If I started playing one of those oldthings I used to do, even before the Flatlanders, Dave would know thesong,” Gilmore said. “Our styles were different but we knew the songstogether. It was kind of a fluke. It was as if the repertoire was built-inwithout us knowing it.”The Downey-Lubbock connection extended to Mexican border radiostations, whose powerful signals reached both places, delivering exoticsounds including doo-wop, wild rock and roll, and dirty blues, courtesyof Wolfman Jack. “We found out on these gigs we both loved NewOrleans Rhythm ‘n’ Blues,” Alvin said. “We share all these influences.”Somewhere along the way, they recognized another shared experiencedating back to the nineteen sixties. The Ash Grove was the storied folkmusic club of Los Angeles where two music-hungry teenage brothersfrom Downey and a young drifter from Lubbock both experienced liveperformances by folks like Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, SonHouse and Brownie McGhee that they’d only heard on records before.“Jimmie never saw Lightnin’ Hopkins in Texas,” Alvin pointed out. Heknew his music through records. He had to go to LA to actually bearwitness.Alvin had to go to Texas to see where all the music he’d grown up onhad come from. “T-Bone and Texas Music to me is West Coast Blues,”Alvin said, citing how the diaspora from Texas and Louisiana filledCalifornia with musical heavies from Walker, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson,and Johnny Guitar Watson to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.The Ash Grove inspired two tracks on From Downey To Lubbock,Brownie and Ruth McGhee’s sanctified gospel number “Walk On,” andthe extremely rocked up Lightnin’ Hopkins tune, “Buddy Brown’sBlues.”Some songs were naturals, such as Woody Guthrie’s timelier-than-ever“Deportee – Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,” which presented a challenge forthese Sons of Woody mainly because hundreds of versions alreadyexisted. (They pulled it off; their version sounds like none other.)They pay respects to three contemporary songwriters and friends whohave passed on: Steve Young, John Stewart and Chris Gaffney, with theircovers of “Silverlake,” “July, You’re a Woman,” and “The Gardens.”“We were playing a show and Jimmie introduced the song ‘Silverlake’ bytelling this story about Steve Young calling him up and saying, ‘I wantyou to sing this song that I wrote,’” Alvin recalled. “My mouth dropped. Isaid, ‘Wait a minute. Steve Young came to my house in 1990 and he toldme he wrote this song for me – same song. ““Yeah, but Steve said he wanted me to sing it,” Gilmore parried back. “Hejust wrote it for you.”“Some of the songs we worked up on gigs,” Dave Alvin said. “It was justthe two of us sitting together. It wasn’t exactly stump the band, butmore like ‘Do you know this one?’ ‘This Sam Cooke song?’ ‘This MerleHaggard song?’ A good chunk of the album was what we did at theseshows. We did the Youngbloods’ song (“Get Together”) every night.There is jug band music (“Stealin’ Stealin’” and “K.C. Moan”), NewOrleans R&B (Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”), and a secondoriginal, Alvin’s mythical encounter “Billy the Kid and Geronimo.”“Jimmie said my favorite thing I’ve ever heard in a recording studio,”Dave Alvin said. “There’s a guitar solo on ‘K.C. Moans’ that I thoughtmight be too over the top and Jimmie said, ‘There’s a time when moreBlue Cheer is better than less Blue Cheer. And this is a more Blue Cheertime.’”“Dave brings an intensive shot of energy,” acknowledged Gilmore. “Bothof us are intellectuals. But we also have that crazy streak. Musically, welike being not intellectual. It’s been an inspiration playing with Dave.We both have a passion about the music. It may not be similar in form,but it’s similar in the underlying drive, and I think we both recognizedthat from early on.”“You go in with, ‘Let’s see what happens: These are great musicians, let’ssee what happens.’ Playing music is an educational process. I’m stillfiguring stuff out,” said Alvin."Downey and Lubbock. There’s a metaphorfor life’s long journey in there.”Taking on all kinds of American music from the 1920s to the present is avery ambitious, very difficult feat to pull off. These two very particular,very peculiar, very not intellectual music makers make it a joy to behold.